Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Nor did it work for taking the dogs out on a Christmas Eve walk, or going to the garden centre to pick up a tree, or for making sure the pheasant feeders were full. Collecting logs? Running a family to the station? Taking rubbish to the dump? All of these simple, mundane things were beyond its cramped rear seat, its tiny boot and its low-profile tyres.

So what about the roof, which slides away electrically in just 9.5 seconds? Nope. Useless. Because, as you may remember, the run-up to Christmas was marked by some of the wettest weather Britain has seen. On the roads, only submarine commanders felt completely at home.

The car didn’t really work as a style statement either. Because there was a time when a white convertible was just the thing. But now? Turning up in a car of this type is like turning up with a Wham! days George Michael blow wave.

There’s a similar problem on the inside because it has the sort of upholstery used to make jackets for German newsreaders. VW will tell you it’s a nod to traditionalism since it’s the same material used to line the seats in the original Golf GTI. But what’s the point of resurrecting something no one remembers or cares about?

What we have here, then, is a car that appears to be a mass of fun but still has one eye pointed in the beige-infused, drip-dry direction of common sense. It sounds good but actually it’s like a leather-soled training shoe. The worst of both worlds…

Because as a sports car it’s not much cop either. I have always been a fan of the Golf GTI. And I’m very much looking forward to trying the new version, which will be the same as all the others; a no-nonsense blend of hard-charging speed and dog-in-the-boot practicality. It doesn’t really matter who you are or what you do, a Golf GTI is the answer.

Take off its roof, though, and it all goes a bit pear-shaped. Not only do you lose a lot of interior space but also you have quite a lot of scuttle shake; a sense that the front of the car and the back aren’t connected quite as well as they should be. Which is true, of course, because whereas in a hard top, you have a sheet of steel joining them together, in a cabrio you only have a bit of canvas.

And to make up for the lack of rigidity, engineers are forced to fit many strengthening beams. Which a) add weight and b) don’t really mask the problem. So the Golf cabrio is like a normal Golf in the same way that Anne Boleyn after her beheading was like Anne Boleyn when all her bits were still joined together.

And it gets worse, because although the roof has many layers of fabric and fits with Germanic precision, you still get a fair bit of extra noise. Which is annoying when you just want to listen to the radio and go home.

In various other ways, the GTI cabriolet is very good at this. It has a delightfully easy-to-use command and control setup. The seats are very well thought out, offering both comfort and support in all the right places. And its ability to deal with speed bumps and potholes is exemplary. Plus it is fast.

But I couldn’t live with the drawbacks and that is neither the end of the story, nor the end of the world. Because the Golf I tested was £30,765, and for around £2,500 less you can have exactly the same car with far fewer problems. It has the same 207-bhp engine, the same suspension, and the same seats, comfort and ease of use. It’s made by the same company and it’s called the Eos.

This comes with a folding metal roof, which is more rigid and better able to protect you from the elements and all their noises. Sure, it’s not as practical as the normal Golf, but for walking the fine line between sports-car motoring and everyday usability it’s not bad at all.

But here’s the clincher. The Golf cabrio really does have a whiff of fake tan about it. I think it may even have the ghost of Duran Duran in its genes. But the Eos does not. The Eos is exactly what you want and expect from VW. A simple, clean blend of well-made anonymity.

Plus, with an Eos, you don’t get a sense that it’s only been made to use up the last of the Golf bits and bobs before the new model arrives next year.

So there we are. If you want a Golf convertible, buy the Golf convertible that isn’t actually called a Golf.

Motoring journalism: someone brings a car to your house on a Monday morning. It’s clean, full of fuel and insured. You have it for a week and then you say whether you like it or not. Couldn’t be easier.

That was certainly the case when I began in the job, because adjusting the vehicle to suit my requirements was a doddle. I simply tweaked the reins and jiggled the saddle around, and all was well. Even as recently as five years ago things were a piece of cake. The car was dropped off and all I needed to do to get comfortable was move the seat back.

Now, though, it’s often Saturday afternoon before I’ve got it set up just so. Because every single thing is adjustable. Not just the seat but the components inside it: the lumbar support, the massage facility, the headrest. All have been set to suit the chap who dropped it off and they need to be reset to suit me.

When you’ve done that – and I’m well aware these are First World problems – you have to waste more valuable time finding the button that adjusts the suspension. Or, as I discovered with the Audi RS 4 that I wrote about here recently, you spend the whole time being vibrated so badly that your skeleton turns to dust.

Then we get to the climate control. You used to have a choice: warm or cold. Now you can select a temperature – to within half a degree – for each person in the car. This takes about a week. And you don’t have a week because you are way too busy reconfiguring the satnav.

Most press-fleet delivery drivers like to have the map constantly spinning round so it’s pointing in the direction of travel. I prefer north to be up. So I have to find the buttons that make this possible and work out the sequence in which they have to be pressed – hard when the lumbar support is digging into your back and the temperature is set at absolute zero. And you’ve got the suspension set on Rock. And then we get to the voice guidance. I cannot imagine for the life of me why delivery drivers like to have their chosen radio station interrupted every few seconds by a woman barking orders when there’s a perfectly good map on the dash. But most do. Which means I have to work out how she may be silenced.

If I designed a satnav system, there would be a massive red button in the middle of the steering wheel marked ‘Silence the Nazi’. But I haven’t. So there isn’t. And in the Hyundai Santa Fe I was driving last week that was a problem.

I tried every single thing I could think of. I even resorted to pulling over and reaching into the glovebox for the handbook… which wasn’t there. So eventually I had to turn to Twitter. And it worked. I was told that while the woman was speaking, I had to turn the volume knob to zero. Doing so at any other time would simply silence the stereo. Not that this would have been a bad thing, as it had been left on Radio 1.

Small wonder the satellite recently launched by the Korean rocket went out of control once it got into orbit. It had probably been driven mad by the constant stream of spoken instructions about where it had to go next.

So, anyway, the first impressions of the Hyundai were not good. And the second weren’t much cop either. Because it’s all a bit rubbishy.

Cleverly, the company has fitted a soft-touch leather steering wheel, so the first thing you touch when you get inside feels expensive and luggzurious. But don’t be fooled, because everything else feels cheap and nasty. The box between the front seats, for instance, has the quality of a Third World bucket. Johnny Hyundai knew a box was necessary and fitted one with no thought at all about how it felt to the touch. If he’d thought for a moment that it could be made from cardboard, it would have been.